A new goal…

 

GOOOAAAALLLL!!!! Although shouting “goal,” at the top of our lungs is usually reserved for soccer stadiums and hockey rinks, it is hard to not want to shout with excitement as we realize that we have once again met our goal for the year! One year ago, as our church was celebrating the 131^st anniversary of the completion of our building, we set a bold goal to raise our average worshipping attendance to at least 40 people every week. Some may remember that the goal we set for the year before was to welcome 130 visitors during the following year. We met that goal as well, but to be able to raise our average worshipping attendance meant that we didn’t just want people to visit, but also to stay! Fortunately for us, it worked!

It took everyone! We are not going to pretend that we blew our goal out of the water. The truth is that we just barely reached it with an average for 40.08 people per Sunday. When we were finished tabulating, we realized that if we had had just one less person on any given Sunday, we might not have made it. What that reminds us is that everyone counted. Do you see? If just one of us had not come to church one Sunday that we were here, if just one of us had not invited a friend to worship with us one day, if just one of us hadn’t committed to worshipping together on a regular basis, then we would not have met our goal. But the good news is that we each made that commitment, and as a result, each of us helped turn our hope into a reality.

Look what happened! The point of our goal for the year was never just to have more people. We made a commitment to be with one another on a regular basis because we recognize that while we can love God and our neighbor separately, we often do it better when we are together. This year certainly helped prove that. We began the year with a bold outreach project at an area event in which we created a giant puzzle assembled by strangers to help raise money for world peace. We held two Arts Nights that helped to offer a place for people to share their gifts with the community. We sent more people from our congregation than perhaps ever before to help repair homes in a flood-ravaged community of Iowa. We launched a new website that offers people around the world a chance to join us in our mission. But perhaps best of all, we spent the spring and summer praying, planning, and preparing our hearts and minds to live out our new mission statement to “feed more sheep.” Clearly getting more of us together on a regular basis has allowed space for the Holy Spirit to work in new and creative ways. Now we have to keep that going.

It’s time for a new goal. Our new mission statement arose from the gathering together of our community to listen for God’s call. As our leadership met to set a new goal, we decided that our new goal needed to celebrate the way that God continues to work in our lives to respond to that call. With that in mind, we are setting aside a moment during every Sunday worship service in the next year to hear how different people in our congregation are responding to the call to “feed more sheep.” Our goal is that no voice will be repeated over the next 52 weeks, which means that all of us at some point in the next year will be asked to share.

How it will work? We will have a “mission moment” set aside as a part of every worship service during the year and members, friends, and guests of the church will be invited to sign up to share on one of the Sundays of the year. Each week a new “voice” will be heard. At the appointed time in the service, that week’s person will be asked to come forward and share a prepared statement of not more than a couple minutes in length simply answering the question, “How are you responding to God’s call to feed more sheep?” Those who are uncomfortable speaking in front of others may still lend their “voice” to this goal by signing up and checking the box which indicates that you would prefer to have someone read your statement for you.

This is for everyone! The point is not to outdo one another in the kinds of ways that we “feed more sheep,” but to remind one another of the numerous ways we can live out this mission in our daily lives. One week we might hear from someone who worked at a soup kitchen, while the next week we might hear from someone who called an estranged family member to offer forgiveness. Large or small, public or private, all of the ways we respond to God’s call deserve to be celebrated. That is our goal of the year to come.

Let’s start together. We will be celebrating the successful completion of last year’s goal and formally committing together to this new goal for the year to come during our anniversary worship service on January 30, 2011. We will follow that worship service with a potluck lunch and a time of fellowship together. I hope to see you there!

Grace and Peace,

Stephen

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! It’s a time for cookies, caroling, parties, gift-giving, family gatherings, (did I mention cookies?), but it is also a time in which we look with hope to the future. Sure, sometimes that hope is simply that we might get through this “most wonderful time of year,” but at our best it is more than that. Part of what we do as a church in both big and small ways is to look backward and forward. We look back to the birth of the Christ-child so that we might look forward to the coming kingdom, but we also begin to look back on the journey of the last year so that we might look with hope toward the future. Fortunately for us, as we consider even the last few months, there is much about which to be hopeful.

It’s been a big fall! We began this fall by debuting our new mission statement: feed more sheep. It was the result of many exciting and prayerful conversations with members of the church since the spring. The reaction of the congregation and community to this commitment has been amazing. It has been wonderful to see how individual members of the congregation have embraced this vision and have started to come up with creative ways to “feed more sheep” in both their daily lives and as a congregation. We spent three weeks looking at each word in the statement and listened together for how we believe God is calling us to live out this commitment as a community of faith. The administrative council has begun setting aside time during each meeting to consider how we are living into our mission to feed more sheep, but the ideas haven’t stopped there.

Practice makes perfect! One of the ideas that came out of our conversations together around our new mission statement was that in order to feed more sheep, we needed to be fed ourselves. As a result, we have decided to focus on a new spiritual discipline each month that is designed to help us find new ways of being personally fed. We began with the practice of prayer beads and will be looking at using a prayer labyrinth in the months to come. Not all practices work for everyone, but this is a simple way that we can help one another find the practices that do feed us so that we might be prepared to help feed others.

A new way of reaching out! One of the ways that we are feeding more sheep is through our new website. We launched it at the beginning of the fall and it has already become an important tool for both keeping our congregation informed as well as reaching out to the community. One of the features we added to the website in the last couple of weeks has been videos of our Sunday morning sermons. Already it has been a way for people both within and without of our community to be a part of our worship life when they can’t be present with us Sunday mornings.

We continue to share our gifts! In November, we held another Arts Night celebration for the church. This was the second time that we have held this event and it was just as successful as the first time around. There is something really amazing about inviting people to come together to share their creativity. We heard poetry, viewed paintings and bowls from people in the congregation, and even had a little sing-a-long led by Jim Carroll. In short, it was an evening which reminded us that when we create we come in contact with the creator.

There’s more to come! The good news is that there is much more ahead of us! We still have another couple of months in our commitment to raise our average worshipping attendance to at least forty people, but for the last few weeks our attendance has been well over fifty. We have continued to see growth in ministries like our Monday morning women’s group, but have also made plans for a new bible study that Ryan Krauss will be leading in the new year. Likewise, with the increased number of children now coming into our congregation, we will be starting a new Sunday School program in January. In short, we have much for which to be thankful and much to which we are still looking forward.

Let’s enjoy this moment. As Christmas continues to approach, let’s do our best to let go of some of the pressures that come from shopping, baking, wrapping, and worrying and simply enjoy this moment. The good news is that there is hope to go around and if this year was any indication, we have much to be hopeful about in the year to come.

Grace and Peace,

Stephen

A statement of mission. On Sunday, September 26, 2026 we as a church made a new commitment to one another. After months of working together, listening to one another, and praying about both how God is working in our lives currently and who God is calling us to be, we rolled out our new mission statement as a congregation: feed more sheep. In the last conversation that Jesus has with Peter in the Gospel of John he commanded him to go out and “feed my sheep.” Today, we are responding to that same call in our own unique way.

It is not about the church. We remember the old children’s song, “The church is not a building, the church is not a steeple, the church is not a resting place, the church is the people. I am the church, you are the church, we are the church together…” As we make a commitment to “feed more sheep,” we make it together, but we recognize that it will take each of us carrying it out individually to succeed. There will be projects ahead that will involve every member of this congregation, but there will also be ways that each of us is individually being challenged to feed more sheep in our own lives. Both are important.

What does “feed” mean? On a very basic level, we are making a commitment to meet particular hungers in the world in tangible ways. This may literally mean providing food for people, but we also recognize that the deep hungers of the world extend beyond food. As such, as a congregation we are committing to use our greatest resources to meet the greatest needs in our community and world. It will mean that each of us will need to prayerfully consider what gifts we have been provided that might help to feed some hunger in the world. It might also mean naming the gifts we see in one another. In short, “to feed” might sometimes mean sharing a meal, or providing clothing, or healing a wound, but it will always mean looking for ways to reach out to meet the needs of the world in love.

What does “more” mean? To make a commitment to feed more sheep, means that we should be careful never to become complacent as a church with the same faces around our table. Yes, we want to see the same people week after week, but we need to remind ourselves that there are enough spaces at our table for everyone. It doesn’t mean that we will judge our success by the numbers in the pews, but rather we will actively work to make sure that our circle is never closed.

What does “sheep” mean? Anyone who as actually spent time around sheep knows that they are not really the sweet and lovable animals that Little Bo Peep makes them out to be. They are rough and dirty and often have bad attitudes. For us, this is a reminder that we are not called to only serve those people with whom we get along, who think like us, or who will keep us comfortable. No! We are a church who believes that everyone is a child of God and that everyone deserves to know that. And so, we commit to feed more sheep with the recognition that we might not always be comfortable, but that we will never exclude someone from our fellowship, whether they be young or old, male or female, republican or democrat, gay or straight, tall or short. By “sheep” we mean everyone.

The statement has been made, now it is time for action! As one theologian put it, “the difference between belief and conviction is action.” We have made this new commitment as a congregation and have taken the time to set before ourselves a mission to “feed more sheep,” now is the exciting time when we begin to do it. Will we be perfect? No. Do we have to be? No. We just have to do our best to use the resources we have been provided in one another to respond to God’s call in our lives. The good news is that in God, every day is a day of new beginnings.

Grace and Peace,

Stephen

The heat is on! Scientists have estimated that it was the hottest June ever recorded on the planet. While we have had our fair share of that heat here in central New Jersey, as a church things have been heating up as well. Since spiritual heat is hotter than physical heat, it seems that we have completed the installation of our new fire alarm system just in time! After all, this summer we have turned up the heat on our ministries and outreach and have plans for continuing to stoke that fire as we head into the fall.

What a summer! It was difficult to bid farewell to Natalie Gibson as she moved down to Tucson, Arizona at the beginning of the summer, but it was a joy to have her with us while she was here and to celebrate her ministry during a special service on June 6. We have also been blessed to welcome Lis Malcolm, a teacher at the New School for Music Study and an accomplished pianist, into our congregation as our new music director. Already Lis has shared her wonderful gift of music with us and we are thrilled to have her as a part of our church family. Music at Kingston UMC is heating up.

Outreach is reaching out! For the past few summers, Aileen Mroz, has been the sole member of our congregation to accompany the district mission team to help rebuild homes in places around the country. This year, Aileen returned with the team to Iowa to continue to help the people there recover from devastating regional floods two years ago. The good news is that this year she was not alone. Wendy Mohler and Ruth Valosin joined the team this year (along with Aileen’s niece and Wendy’s parents) and they all worked very hard to bring hope to a people very much in need of their help. We thank God for their outreach and pray continued blessings on all of those with whom they came in contact. Outreach at Kingston UMC is heating up.

A time to get away! This year we had a youth of our church take up the bishop’s challenge to take a pilgrimage to Taizé, France. The Taizé community is a group of brothers who have made it their mission to bring youth from around the world together to experience a week of prayer, simplicity, and communion with one another. Shannon Dean has just returned from that trip and will be sharing with us this fall many of the fruits of that pilgrimage. Personal formation at Kingston UMC is heating up.

Looking toward the future! Many of you know that we spent several months this spring making decisions about who we are as a congregation and who God is calling us to be. We are happy to report that out of that discussion came a new mission statement for our congregation. It is a simple reminder of who we are called to be and what we are called to do. It will be announced to the congregation during our Homecoming Sunday celebration on September 26. On that day we will have an ice cream social following the service to commemorate the event. Our mission at Kingston UMC is heating up.

Tend the fire! As the physical heat of the summer will soon pass into the cool breezes of the fall, we will have to be diligent about keeping the spiritual heat flowing. Fortunately, we have much happening in the life of the congregation and lots of energy for the year ahead. Let us pray that as we move into this new season we will continue to listen for God’s call in our lives together and continue to feel the heat and the power of the Holy Spirit in our work together.

Grace and Peace,

Stephen